Here is the story, according to John himself:

“After killing the Spiderdemon at the end of E4M8 (Unto the Cruel), your next stop is Earth — you must save it from hellspawn that is causing unimaginable carnage. But Baphomet glitched the final teleporter with his hidden sigil whose eldritch power brings you to even darker shores of Hell. You fight through this stygian pocket of evil to confront the ultimate harbingers of Satan, then finally return to become Earth’s savior.”

Sigil’s opening screen. KVLT ANTI-HVMAN BLACK METAL

I am a pretty well-seasoned DOOM player, and can usually handle the original 3 episodes on Nightmare or at least UV. This shit is turning my guts inside out on Hurt Me Plenty. You will not see health much at all. You will need to be extremely careful. Yes, there are horrible monster traps everywhere. Inescapable pits too. You will die. You will know death again, Marine. You can never truly rest. But Space Marines are made for this shit. Let’s hit it.

E5M1 is a true gauntlet-run involving the elevation of platforms in order to find your way through a winding path of hitscanners and imps. The maps are very dimly lit, and instead of switches, Romero has us shooting the demonic eye symbols to activate/open things. I’ll save you the five or so seconds it’d take to puzzle it out. Sheol (E5M2) continues to incline the difficulty in a steady fashion. Breaking a sweat yet? You often find yourself with little room to move one way or another, measuring moments and shots, clinging to cover while whittling away at potentially deadly ambushes. I hope you like seeing barons and cacodemons up close, because you fucking will be. E5M3 is called Cages of the Damned, and it looks slightly more “conventional” as a map when you first start blasting through. Vaguely castle-like, with great run-and-gun action and a few open spaces (finally!) to use in combat. I’d even call E5M3 “classical” because of how true parts of it are to the original feel of the trilogy. You’re still, however, finding very little health. And yes, you’re still in horrible peril on a constant basis. Paths of Wretchedness (E5M4) is another hectic rim-grabber over pools of magma as you battle your way through a shooting gallery with you as the turkey. Movement is again limited, and you find yourself getting pummeled in bottlenecks – sometimes caught with your fucking pants down – and perishing if you’re not on your LeBron “Leatherface on Mars” James A-game. This level has a splash of that old alien-mechanical feel to it reminiscent of Knee-Deep in the Dead. Probably another of my overall favorites of the episode. While health is scarce throughout this episode, you will find enough ammunition if you are thorough, frugal, and keep your eyes open.

Pictured: One scrub (yours truly), pre-tenderized.

Abbadon’s Void (E5M5) hits us with the sound of a cyberdemon right out of the starting gate, and we don’t clearly see it, but we know it’s aware of us and it’s pissed off. Great. More indoorsy, wood-paneled infernal décor, peppered with monster closet ambushes and tense high-wire acts. I particularly enjoy the MIDI OST track for this map (more on the music below); it’s atmospheric and rich and it reminds me a little of Blood’s great theatrical-style music. E5M6, Unspeakable Persecution, has the exit to the secret level E5M9 (Realm of Iblis). I’m not going to spoil where the door is or what the secret level is like; if you want that shit you can find it easily online. (I admit that I had to look it up. My skills have gotten mad rusty.) I will say that E5M9 is as hot and nasty as you’d expect Sigil’s secret map to be. Buckle up, buttercup. E5M7 is the Nightmare Underworld, and it was originally meant to be the fifth map, but it belongs here in spot #7. It is an expansive and adventurous map, and it pounds me into hamburger at an embarrassing rate. John’s work in Sigil is the work of a man who intimately understands the tools he is using to engage the player. It is the work of a methodical, gifted, calculating psychopath. E5M8, Halls of Perdition, presents the final obstacle in Sigil. Like E4M8, it is not just a straight boss fight; you must find your way through one last intense firefight against the full host of DOOM’s baddies intent on beating you down. The finale has a marathon-like feel and is almost joyful (I only beat it once using equipment cheats on Hurt Me Plenty).

decino’s entertaining and thorough playthrough of Sigil. He is a much better player than me. Props.

Hi. <3

Let’s talk about the absolute fucking banger soundtrack. If you don’t know who Buckethead is, you should, and he wrote the CD soundtrack for Sigil. Apparently, he’s a long-time DOOM fan. Who’d have thought a dude like the immortal Buckethead would have good taste. It is busy, atmospheric, haunting, and it fits Sigil’s gloomy theme of desperation perfectly. The episode also features a fantastic MIDI soundtrack written by James Paddock. It’s a little more action-themed but fits the game every bit as well as the Buckethead score. E5M1 and E5M7 stand out to me as highlights, and you should have a listen.

Ol’ Johnny R. goes hard in the paint with Sigil, reminding us longtime Space Marines that while our blood may smear every hallway and elevator from Phobos to Mt. Erebus, we can never die. Besides, who the hell else is going to keep the demons down? You know they’ll just be back . They always come back.

Sigil gets a 9 out of 10 from me. It’s difficult, but that’s not a complaint at all. It’s a brutally refreshing shot in the arm for a game that’s been loved for over twenty-six years. Devastatingly crisp, well-executed, and effective. John Romero has given us more to love about DOOM… and a new way to get our asses kicked and GET GOOD.

See you later for more articles in October. Stay spooky as hell… and Stay Retro.

BONUS: Of course there’s a Zero Master speed run of 9:32 for it already. Hallelujah.

Now put on some gloves. This isn’t light work. No, the thick rubber ones. Yeah, trust me.

Pac-Man (Atari 400/800/XE/XL Version)

Atari, 1982

No wonder those ghosts want to kill him. Look at him. He looks like Gerbert if Gerbert hit puberty and became, I don’t know, Dobie Gillis. What other lame references can I sneak in here? His face is horrible. He never had or needed teeth before, and now he has – that’s right – JUST INCISORS. Pac-Man doesn’t chew things. That’s fanciful bullshit for children. He just consumes them. I posit that Pac-Man is not the protagonist in this tale. The ghosts are sick of him chomping through their giant Spree candy and this time they’re not calling the cops. I like how the red ghost (I know they have names but I refuse to give them the dignity) is licking its lips. Its eerily humanlike hands put Pac’s rubbery-ass Gumby mittens to shame. Ditch the teeth and get some fingers, dude. Pac-Man is at his worst here, blindly swimming in his violent addiction even as he flees those who would destroy him for it.

This wouldn’t be so unsettling without the eyes. He sleeps in little snatches, 2 or 3 hours at a time. It’s all he can manage since he signed up for those LSD experiments to get time off his sentence.

Dr. Pimple’s Dog

Euro-Byte, 1983

Dr. Pimple collects two things. One of them is aerosol canisters full of pressurized horse blood. The other is gullible dogs. The monocle is an affectation that seems out of place with a green Nehru jacket and a face that looks like Boris Karloff knocked up Edward James Olmos. Doc Pimple doesn’t care. You’ll be wondering about more than his monocle when you’re covered in rarefied horse blood and running at full speed from a cheerful suicide dog.

“16 maidens to rescue” is more of a sarcastic taunt than a call to action; Pimple’s already atomized their fluids and fed the jerky-like husks to “Spot.” Spot loves this whole thing, because as noble as we make dogs out to be, every single one of them is a depraved Epicurean hedonist capable of appalling acts of violence. Wait, hold up… my bad, that’s cats.

Dr. Pimple could have done a lot with his life, but he’s chosen his path… he aims to be the H.H. Holmes of the Commodore 64 world. All it takes is a good dog, a fresh can of horsey juice, and a dream.

Venom

Mastertronic, 1987

THIS IS HOW YOU SELL A VIDEO GAME. This could be the cover of a truly “wicked” metal album, or in the pages of an RPG book, or just a motivational poster to remind us what matters… suiting up and riding out on your slobbering human-eyed horse to split wigs and mete out justice.

Peep this fucking horse though. Those eyes look like a human’s and they’re scowling. It’s looking right at the viewer, as if to assure you that yes, you are next, and that your agony will make hell seem like a utopia. The knight and his steed work as one, but they do not kill serpents out of nobility or virtue. These two are full-time on this shit for its own sake, carrying the last of their savings in cash and waiting for their blood to mingle with yours and the snake’s as it soaks into the graying earth. Until then, they kill simply to exult in the act, and besides, no one misses the giant fucking snakes.

Panic 64

Interceptor Software, 1983

The cover of Panic 64 was drawn by the sister of Interceptor Micro’s programmer Andrew Challis. I don’t know if she ever did any other professional artwork, but I’d love to see it if she has. Here we have another slice of life from an abstract hellscape: clouds of methane gas fill the yawning voids between pieces of crumbling Chuck E Cheeze architecture, a backdrop for one voyager’s final stand against some very flamboyant CHUDs. Kneeling from fatigue, his eyes wide with the fury of patience finally lost, he shoves back the stubby mob of child-sized mutants as he places and arms the last device. Thirty seconds to detonation, and the extraction point is somewhere down that ladder.

“Fuck it,” he mumbles to himself as he kicks an infant sized ghoul into the gasoline-puddle abyss. “Might as well just jump.”

Super Breakout (2600)

Atari, 1979

In the cold and fathomless black ocean of deep space, dancing on the edge of a 200-billion-light-year-wide supervoid containing only emptiness, a lonely astronaut waits to die. The colors surround him. They mock and sing. His aim is off and he lets another projectile slip into the starless black, past him and on into infinity. It easily leaves this non-place where he is trapped. He stares blankly as it fades into the dark and he fights the urge to weep. No, he will not lose his mind here, despite all. The cruelest joke is that he already has.

He has not played catch with his son or made love to his wife in æons. He does not even know how old he is now, or how long he has been imprisoned. Time has left this place, a brittle totem of man’s meaningless structures. Long ago his oxygen supply should have dwindled. When he first blundered into this absurd game of catch, a veritable rainbow-wall of bright light bore down on him like a sniper on a dim rooftop. In a spectacle of idiot monotony, he has worn down the walls of this lurid Jericho, but he lacks the faith of Joshua. In this immeasurable span of silent hours, the minimal progress is totally meaningless. He narrows his eyes as he turns back to the rusted console, and for the first time since he lost contact with Earth, he speaks.

“I wish I had another game. This one sucks.”

See You Soon, and Stay Retro!

Look in the other photo captions for fun little links to relevant videos! 

Thankfully, the first part of that question is fairly easy to nail down. While the first true video games were developed in the 1950s and were simply electronic versions of popular board games, most gamers agree that the 1970s heralded the beginning of gaming’s golden age. In 1971, the first true coin-op arcade video game was finalized at Stanford. It was called Galaxy Game, and used vector displays along with a processor called the PDP-11. Once the floodgates opened, arcades became like roller rinks or discos; everyone wanted to go and there was plenty of fun to be had. Pong came just a year after Galaxy Game, and was released as a dedicated console soon afterward. The basis was already laid for a burgeoning new industry. Japan, whose electronics were quickly becoming near-magical in terms of innovation, took note. The world was falling in love with video games.

This is Galaxy Game, folks. She looks like something you’d throw your empties into, but she was state of the art back in ’71.

The second half of our quandary is a real head-scratcher, and is often a topic of spirited debate among the faithful. One popular theory is that “retro” ends around 1995. During this year, Sony’s first PlayStation console began to deflate from its peak while other fifth-generation consoles flopped in what became a mini-version of 1983’s flooded market. 1995-96 was the era of the Saturn, the Virtual Boy, the 3DO, and the Jaguar. This miniature singularity represents a symbolic death for the era as far as many gamers are concerned.

I still have mine, and I still play it. I’m particularly fond of a cheerful little bastard who goes by the name of Mr. Driller, but I also love Bushido Blade and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. And yes, in my eyes, the PS1 is retro as hell.

Another popular idea places the cutoff point around the late nineties. This pivots around two things: the huge amount of love many console fans have for the Dreamcast despite its summary commercial failure (myself included), and the popular idea that the late 90s were an overall cultural “changing of the guard.” The “real” 90s were over, and the 80s aesthetic was pretty dead; Everything was focused on the modern and the new for quite some time right around the beginning of ’99.

Seriously though. Chu-Chu Rocket! and Ikaruga changed my world. Yes, the controller was weird. Yes, the games took a bit to load sometimes. But I’m telling you… this was really something. No wonder the vaporwave crowd is so obsessed with it.

A third opinion, held by a growing minority, is that retro is entirely relative to the individual. While this may be a less widely held belief, it may well be the most realistic. After all, isn’t individual experience subjective? I never saw 1982; I wasn’t born yet. 1996 was part of someone else’s modern era, but to me, it was the apex of my childhood. It’s food for thought, but it often fails to satisfy the hard-and-fast VG fans out there who like to fit things into neat rows. And nothing against them… my D&D bookshelf as well as my ROM library are testament to my appreciation for order.

If you’d like to weigh in on this and other topics, please join us over at NRW Gaming’s Facebook page. We welcome discussion, comment, and even friendly debate in the comments sections of our posts. Tell us what you think “retro” means when it comes to cartridges and discs. Is there a cutoff point, or is it all in the eye of the beholder? Time, after all, doesn’t stop… and for the time being, neither do gamers!

Tonight, we’ll be visiting the grave of a daring hero form far-off Japan. It never really made it all the way west, but it had ambitious beginnings and deserves a place in video gaming history. It was Sega’s first earnest attempt to go head-to-head with the mighty Nintendo, and despite its fall, it paved the way for future success by whetting the teeth of those involved. This entry into the Console Graveyard is… the Sega SG-1000.

A bright and sunny little thing, all too blissfully unaware of its imminent fate.

The “third generation” of console video games began a bit earlier than a casual observer may think. When Nintendo broke its champagne bottle over the Famicom and let it set sail, times were actually fairly lean in the console market. Launching a new video game system, no matter how innovative, could have been seen as a rather bold move. However, Nintendo had faith in their device, and it proved to be well warranted; by 1987, Nintendo dominated around 65% of worldwide video game console hardware sales.

Little do many know that Sega made a valiant attempt to compete with the growing monolith. When the arcade market that had been such a comfortable home for them took a downturn in ’82, Sega began developing the SG-1000. The company had recently sold off some licensing, and was split in to a North American R&D arm and its Japanese corporate branch. The president of the Japanese company, Hayao Nakayama, lobbied hard for Sega to apply its proven clout in the arcade realm to a home console. The end result was the stout little SG-1000, a strange creature that sort of bridged the gap between the Atari 2600 and Nintendo’s Famicom system.

A strange but colorful ad for the SG-1000. I say “strange,” but stranger has come and gone, to be fair.

The first iteration of the SG-1000 was a squat, bright white affair, very simple in its presentation but almost cheerful looking. The controller looked a lot like Atari’s, taking the form of a compact little joystick with broad orange buttons on either side. The graphics gently outperformed the 2600, but couldn’t quite compare to those of the Famicom system, with a modest 256×192 resolution and a 16 color palette. Part of the falling-short could be blamed on hardware component choices; the Zilog z80 CPU and Texas Instruments video and sound chips were the same ones used in the ColecoVision… a then-outdated system. In fact, an unlicensed system called the Telegames Personal Arcade was produced later on that could play both SG-1000 and ColecoVision games.

Screens from Flicky and Girl’s Garden, two of the more memorable titles for the SG-1000.

Despite these shortcomings, the system fared decently at very first, at least in domestic Japanese sales. It was also marketed in Spain with some initial success, but the American market never saw the SG-1000. However, a damning set of circumstances brought about the slow demise of Sega’s new baby. First off, much like some later consoles I’ve covered in this series of articles, Sega attempted to address flaws by simply redesigning and re-marketing the console in new forms. In July of 1984, another corporate buyout was followed by the release of the SG-1000 II. This new packaging included slightly improved controls and the ability to play Sega Card games as well as cartridges, but the console sold poorly out of the gate. An additional computer-keyboard style attachment did little to buoy sales, and the SG-1000 series was discontinued by October of 1985. The series was also badly hit by the crash of 1983, not to mention competition outside of Nintendo in its native Japan. While Sega had lost this battle with Nintendo, they learned a lot, and doubled down on their development of console hardware. The Sega Mark III was released that same year, and it evolved into the well-known Master System, a console that was finally able to compete well in the now-growing market. By 1988, the Genesis was emerging on the scene, and the wars of the fourth generation were in full swing.

Left to right: the Mark II, the 1100 keyboard attachment, and the SC-3000 (a last ditch effort to repackage the system as a personal computer).

While researching this article, I was able to find very little information of much detail on the SG-1000, which leads me to believe it is often overlooked out of hand. However, as we pay our respects at this dusty crypt, we see upon closer examination that we stand at the grave of an unsung hero. I hope at least a handful of our readers discovered something they hadn’t seen or known here today. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and may we never forget the little consoles that fell into the spaces between.

Thanks for reading!

By this point I’m fairly certain a lot of our readers were kids or preteens when the Disney lineup of cartoons was popular in the 1990s. Some of them were barely memorable, but the ones like DuckTales, TaleSpin and Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers were good enough that some of us (definitely including myself) can sing the theme songs verbatim on the drop of a dime. Of course, in the period between ’89 and ’92, during the last big boom for the NES, a lot of these and other pop culture staples got licensed games. Again, some of these were unfortunate flops in terms of quality, but Rescue Rangers was actually one of the decent ones.

I sang along with this all the way through before grabbing the embed code. Please feel free to do the same. If you’re self-conscious, just make sure no one’s watching… they may want to join in.

If you’re not familiar with the history of the chipmunk duo, they had been around well before someone put clothes on them and made them tiny detectives. They were actually created back in 1943, and appeared in 23 short films until about 1956. They usually acted as gentle antagonists or foils to the dog Pluto, another staple background character in the Disney lineup. In 1988, Disney got the idea of reviving the two chipmunks as part of their flourishing series of network cartoons. The series was run on Disney channel in 1989, and entered network syndication on ABC and CBS in 1990. The show lasted until 1993 on television, and was quietly phased out along with most of Disney’s early-90s afternoon syndicated toons.

While researching this article, I actually learned that their names are a pun on the name of a famous 18th Century cabinet maker, Thomas Chippendale. It has nothing to do with the erotic male dancers. that’s… oddly comforting to me.

In the summer of 1990, Capcom released the Rescue Rangers game for the NES. This was Capcom’s second Disney-themed release for the NES, after 1989’s hugely successful DuckTales title. Overall, Chip n Dale sold 1.2 million copies worldwide for the NES, which we’ll acknowledge as a modest but solid success for a game of the period. It is widely praised not only for its creatively designed gameplay, but also for its engaging 2 player experience wherein many parts of the game are much more fun if played with both chipmunks.

The North American and Japanese box art. The game’s Japanese title is Chippu to Dēru no Daisakusen, which just means “Chip n Dale’s Mission.”

The plot of the game begins with the duo investigating a lost kitten, which turns out to be a ruse by the series villain, Fat Cat. The porcine feline has used the trick to kidnap Gadget, the team’s tech wizard, and put her talents to nefarious ends. From stage to stage, she is able to send small hints via a crude phone she makes without Fat Cat’s knowledge. Chip and Dale must navigate a not-totally-linear series of stages to try and reach Fat Cat’s lair before he achieves his evil plan, whatever it is. Part of your pursuit of Fat Cat involves using a rocket to go to a whole new map of levels.

He not only used a baby as a diversion, but a baby of his own kind. Heartless bastard.

Our tiny pair of gumshoes are besieged the entire time by a strange crew of baddies: evil robots, metal mice, shapechanging glop monsters, rude kangaroos, and assorted other ne’er-do-wells who want to keep them from their goal. Chip and Dale are able to defend themselves by taking a page out of Super Mario Brothers 2‘s book, lifting and hurling all kinds of objects. They can even hurl one another, although this can be a risky tactic at best. Larger items, when lifted, can slow you down a little, but these are few and far between. Gameplay involves not only tossing tiny boxes at your enemies, but also navigating nasty puzzles. Notable are two examples: a series of faucets you must turn off as you advance to avoid being scalded, and a set of switches attached to machines that will drop heavy metal ball bearings on you if not deactivated. The bosses are all huge (compared to you), and require a few smacks with some item nearby to put them down. You can also get a powerup that summons Zipper, the little mosquito or hornet guy, or whatever he was supposed to be. Not only are you invulnerable while he stays on screen, but he flies around stinging the shit out of anything he can reach, which can clear a screen pretty quick.

A small gallery of the lunacy our eensy-weensy heroes must endure to rescue their friend and stop Fat Cat. Click an image to enlarge it (a little bit).

Both this game and DuckTales got sequels on the same console, and those titles were fairly popular as well. A completely unrelated Chip n Dale game came out for mobile in 2010, but I wasn’t able to find much about it anywhere. Also of note, the game was ported to Nintendo’s PlayChoice10 arcade-style console.

I grant Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers for the NES 7 out of 10 stars. It’s a really fun game to play with two players, it’s respectably difficult but approachable, and overall it’s a memorable Capcom title. It also deserves credit as another example of a licensed game that isn’t utter shit.

That’s all folks! See you later in June for more NRW Gaming action! Tune in next time!

For the past couple of years, all I hear about from my friends is how great Skyrim is.

I mean, they’re right. It’s a graphical and gameplay masterpiece. It outshines the previous two installments in the Elder Scrolls series, and even screenshots of it are breathtaking. It inspired me to buy Morrowind again recently, off of Steam, and play it through from the start. I was glad I did; It seems that Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls saga is consistently incredible.

But did you ever play the first one?

A modest beginning for what would become one of fantasy video gaming’s iconic franchises.

In 1994, 3D and first-person were really hitting their stride. These concepts were being applied with a wide brush, and all kinds of games were being developed to exploit the new jump in technology. It only stood to reason that someone would develop an RPG using the scope popularized by games like Doom and Quake; First-person 3D worlds simply begged for exploration. Bethesda Softworks, then a small company in Maryland, decided to tackle the task. Though they’d been around since 1986, Bethesda’s biggest notoriety up until then had been developing the first physics based sports simulator, Gridiron, for the Atari ST. They had also made DOS and NES games based on the first Terminator film, and the DOS version contained some 3D elements.

Some kickin’ box art, in the glorious tradition of classic fantasy. Babes, wizards, knights… you knew you were in for a fantasy epic when you grabbed this off the shelf.

Elder Scrolls: Arena is an oft-overshadowed ground breaker in terms of both first-person RPGs and the “open world” concept. The player creates a customized character using the now-familiar races and classes, and can pursue the game’s main plot while also doing side quests. There is also the (then) novel option of just poking around the land of Tamriel and seeing what turns up. But first… you must make it out of the initial dungeon.

Hunting MacGuffins, hobnobbing with royalty, battling wizards and skeletons… welcome to Tamriel.

Arena‘s plot involves the betrayal of the Emperor by his battlemage Jagar Tharn. Tharn imprisons the Emperor in a pocket dimension, and uses magic to assume his form. Tharn also kills his apprentice, Ria Silmane, because he knows she cannot be corrupted. Silmane sends her spirit to you as you languish in the dungeons beneath the Imperial City, and sets you free by helping you find a key to open your cell. You find a smattering of helpful equipment and progress through what seems to be a set of sewers, slaying rats and goblins as you seek the exit. You then emerge (if you are lucky) in a random part of the Empire… and the story begins. The objective is to assemble the parts of a magic staff that can be used against Jagar Tharn, and confront him in the Imperial City once you have become powerful enough to stop him. There are many other quests you must undertake in the meantime: rescuing people, delving into ancient ruins, and other typical (but exciting) fantasy adventures.

Arena presents you with literally the entire Empire, and you can visit each province. While the graphics are understandably limited, it is a vast game for its time. A great deal of information is packed into one game world, and while the taverns and shops all look the same, everything is worth exploring and there are tons of unique locales dotting the world of Tamriel.

All this could be yours… well, not really, but you do get to explore it all.

And they are full of monsters. Orcs, skeletons, monstrous hounds, minotaurs… there are even vampires and undead wizards (called liches) running around in some of these forsaken places you’ll discover. And of course, you’ll occasionally run into rival adventurers and agents of Jagar Tharn. Tharn himself will occasionally harrow you in your dreams, once he knows you’re assembling the magic staff.

You can also steal things from people and generally be an asshole, if that’s what you’re into. That’s kind of what I’m into.

Almost all of the well-known class choices are available for you during character creation, and while the Argonians and Khajit look far more human than you may be used to, the only race missing is Imperial. You can go for stealth, magic, brawn, or a combination thereof. I had the most success as a melee bruiser, but it’s fun to throw around magic fireballs and float in midair too. It also helps to be able to pick locks. Finding good loot is half the fun when poking through the places your quest will take you; gold can only buy so much, and everyone knows the best toys are lying undisturbed for centuries in the ruins.

Blue means it’s probably magical. Sometimes it behooves you to mismatch armor, or wield a sword that looks like it’s made from uranium. Just do it. Heroism is never easy.

The game’s soundtrack, while a far cry from its sequels’ scores, is still rich and appropriate. It is a little repetitive, but one hardly notices. The graphics are perhaps more grainy and pixelated than something like Doom; with so much to pack into a game world (and a disc), the detail had to be a point of compromise. Nonetheless, you’ll find that the textures and sprites are adequate. The only other point to pick at is that Tamriel, in its first incarnation, is quite a flat realm. No inclines, hills, or soft curves exist. Again, one must remember that this is the grandpappy of what became a legendary set of games. Some gentleness must be shown in judging what really is a stellar release for 1994. Besides, the cinematic cut scenes are obscenely cool. Especially the ending.

I give Elder Scrolls: Arena 8 out of 10. I do so through the gilded lens of hindsight, and to acknowledge that its genetics are very much alive in games like Skyrim. I spent many an hour plugging away at the Quest to assemble the Staff of Chaos, and while I never finished that mighty undertaking, it was worth all the time invested. As a man who adores the fantasy genre, it has always stood out in my mind as a game all too easily forgotten. Especially since it spawned such incredible sequels and helped jump start a now monolithic company!

And thankfully, there were many more. Thanks for reading, RetroWizards!

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Oct 3, 2017

comic reviews

Comic books, comic reviews, big trouble in little china, hellraiser, bill & ted, dark crystal

Joey Edsall

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Oct 3, 2017

comic reviews

Comic books, comic reviews, big trouble in little china, hellraiser, bill & ted, dark crystal

Joey Edsall

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Oct 3, 2017

comic reviews

Comic books, comic reviews, big trouble in little china, hellraiser, bill & ted, dark crystal

Joey Edsall

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Oct 3, 2017

comic reviews

Comic books, comic reviews, big trouble in little china, hellraiser, bill & ted, dark crystal

Joey Edsall

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Aug 10, 2017

comic retrospectives

batman, year one, frank miller, batman year one, batman: year one, gotham city, james gordon, 80’s comics, retro comics

Joey Edsall

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Aug 10, 2017

comic retrospectives

batman, year one, frank miller, batman year one, batman: year one, gotham city, james gordon, 80’s comics, retro comics

Joey Edsall

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Aug 10, 2017

comic retrospectives

batman, year one, frank miller, batman year one, batman: year one, gotham city, james gordon, 80’s comics, retro comics

Joey Edsall

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Aug 10, 2017

comic retrospectives

batman, year one, frank miller, batman year one, batman: year one, gotham city, james gordon, 80’s comics, retro comics

Joey Edsall

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Aug 10, 2017

comic retrospectives

batman, year one, frank miller, batman year one, batman: year one, gotham city, james gordon, 80’s comics, retro comics

Joey Edsall

Comment

Aug 10, 2017

comic retrospectives

batman, year one, frank miller, batman year one, batman: year one, gotham city, james gordon, 80’s comics, retro comics

Joey Edsall

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It is worth sharing that Bethesda made TES: ARENA public domain and free to download. You can get it from their site here. You may also need DOSBox to play it on most modern PC setups. Enjoy!

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/04/05/the-elder-scrolls-arena-bethesda-softworks-1994/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2016/03/06/gremlins-2-the-new-batch-sunsoft-1990/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/03/06/gremlins-2-the-new-batch-sunsoft-1990/#respond Sun, 06 Mar 2016 04:02:54 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/03/07/201636gremlins-2-the-new-batch-sunsoft-1990/

I love video games. If I didn’t, I’d be one miserable man writing these articles thrice a month, wouldn’t I? But another love of mine, every bit as deep, is a love for horror films. I especially love the monster films. I am of the old guard, those who maintain that the glory days of practical FX outshine the glossy, fake looking CGI seen in modern cinema. Work by pioneers like Tom Savini, Stand Winston, Kevin Yagher, and Chris Walas. 1984’s Gremlins, and to a lesser extent, its sequel, have always been favorites of mine due to the amazing creature work. They are also violent, funny, and well-produced movies. The idea of a horde of little reptilian humanoids wreaking havoc in the human world always fascinated me as a kid. I loved how mean (but funny) the titular monsters were, as well as the campy monster gore and gross-out FX… all the fluids and green goo.

I mean, who didn’t love shit like this? Cinema gold, man. Cinema gold.

I don’t write much about Atari 2600/5200 games because there’s rarely much substance to them, but there was actually a Gremlins game for both systems. Neither version is anything to write home about, unfortunately. However, the 1990 sequel Gremlins 2: The New Batch got an NES game, and it represents the kind of treatment I wish the original film had gotten in video game format. Developed by Sunsoft, this top-scrolling action game was received better than any other attempt to translate the franchise to video games, at least up until that point. While other games based on Gremlins 2 were released by other companies for the ZX Spectrum, Atari, MSX, Amiga, and even DOS, none of them held much lasting appeal. Sunsoft’s effort went over pretty well, as the NES was still very popular and the film had been a hit due to its more kid-friendly setup compared to its predecessor.

In Gremlins 2, you play as Gizmo. Not Billy, not even Mr. Futterman… but Gizmo. Just like in the movie, you’ve been captured by the questionable researchers working for Clamp Enterprises. They’ve locked you in a cage in the lab, think of you as just another animal.

Their mistake.

The game simplifies the plot of the movie out of necessity, with the end goal being to reach the Gremlin Control Centre and wipe out the Gremlin infestation from the building. The beginning cutscene shows Billy setting you free, but then he takes sort of a background role.

Yeah, f*ck you too.

Gizmo hardly needs help anyway; he starts out armed with a truly lethal weapon… an unlimited supply of tomatoes. Hurling tomatoes at rats is the first thing you find yourself doing, but you soon run into tougher foes as you progress through the floors of the building.

A lot of the areas tie into scenes from the film, like this spooky little spot in the TV station level. 

It’s worth noting that there are also a lot of spikes, pits, and other obstacles… OSHA would have a field day with Clamp Enterprises for keeping their building like this. I mean, there are A LOT of floor spikes in this office building. I’m pretty sure the normal specs for office space dictate exactly zero (0) strips of mechanically pulsating floor spikes.

Definitely an unsafe work environment.

Another cinematic eventually shows Gizmo getting wet, his new “offspring” disposing of him (so they think) in the air vents. Once you fight your way out, you learn that history has in fact repeated itself… the Gremlins are back. From this point on, your enemies are predominantly Gremlins, in one form or another. The first major boss is Mohawk, who you tackle at the end of the second area (air vents); it is presumed he does not die, because, well, you’ve seen the movie, and his spider form shows up later in the game. He shows up one more time beforehand… with an automatic weapon.

Shit.

Double shit.

You battle flying Gremlins, disembodied Gremlin arms, rats, bats, genetically modified Gremlins, and a few things I can’t readily identify. Thankfully, Gizmo occasionally picks up new weapons (and eventually pieces together the paperclip and match stick bow seen in the film). Also, Mr. Wing occasionally sells you stuff to help you, which is kind of funny, because:

1) he dies in the beginning of the film

2) the manual for the game says he’s dead too

3) you enter his shop through Mogwai-sized doors throughout the building of the man who aggressively tried to buy him out before he died

Eh, video game logic, right? Besides, even if Mr. Wing is just a vengeful (and helpful) ghost, the life potions and other items he sells you are pretty useful. All he asks in return are the little crystal balls you keep picking up from defeated monsters. Some of the powerups you get have to be activated from the pause screen, which acts as a sort of inventory tally. Balloons are incredibly handy; since there are approximately 1,000,000 bottomless death pits in the Clamp Building, being able to float for a few seconds is pretty nice.

You can tell two things by Mr. Wing’s expression: he knows this is bullshit, and he’s not terribly upset about being dead.

The graphics are really cool, with some fantastic cutscenes that draw directly from the film’s memorable moments. The bosses are pretty creepy, especially Mohawk in his final form. As usual, Sunsoft went with a sort of “drab candy” color scheme for everything, making it seem gloomy but undeniably 80s/90s.

…triple shit.

The soundtrack is surprisingly good; as with Batman and Fester’s Quest, Sunsoft really stretched the boundaries of what could be done with the NES’s audio chipset. The music is equal parts spooky and goofy, but never lazy (as is the case with all too many movie cash-in games of the era).

I give Gremlins 2: The New Batch 6 stars out of 10. I like the game more because of the movie, but it’s not a bad game. It packs a decent challenge, looks and sounds great, and stands tall alongside Sunsoft’s other titles of the time period.

Goodbye for now, RetroFans! More goodies in the works for March and beyond!

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/03/06/gremlins-2-the-new-batch-sunsoft-1990/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2016/01/30/adventures-of-bayou-billy-1988-konami/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/01/30/adventures-of-bayou-billy-1988-konami/#respond Sat, 30 Jan 2016 19:57:08 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/01/30/2016130adventures-of-bayou-billy-1988-konami/

The games we remember from the golden era fall into two categories: the classic, undeniably great ones… and the ones so ridiculous we can’t forget them. They’re not even necessarily bad (although many of them are), but they’re just so… well, bizarre that they become etched into our memories for decades.

This is one I’ve wanted to visit for some time now. I saved it for a rainy day.

Adventures of Bayou Billy is a retooling of a Famicom game called Mad City, which was released in 1988. When exporting the game to America and the PAL region in 1989, Konami decided to redo a lot of the graphics and scale up the difficulty a little. They also added something fairly rare at the time: DCPM-coded digital voice samples. What’s actually neat about the game is that it’s three games in one: you will do some hand to hand fighting, some action driving, and some shooting (either with the Zapper or the controller).

In either game, you play Billy West, a survivalist and ex-soldier who lives in the bayou and spends most of his time fighting the crime lord Godfather Gordon. Guess what Gordon does to get your attention and set up one big showdown in the Big Easy?

Very original! I think I’m beginning to learn something about living in a video game: don’t ever love anyone or anything, or it will be used against you.

That’s right. Your scandalously curvy girlfriend, Annabelle, is in trouble! Gordon not only has time on his hands, but apparently a lot of money to throw away on your murder as well, since you’ll deal with threats ranging from gators and thugs to airplanes and helicopters. The baddies (even the gators) drop food, weapons and armor occasionally, and these help a lot since Billy actually isn’t all that great of a fighter. His repertoire consists of a punch that has lousy reach, a kick that has slightly less lousy reach, and a jump kick that looks like some Riverdance shit. Some enemies even drop guns, which give you bullets for yours. When I say “some,” I mean “very few.”

You know all those strongmen downtown in New Orleans. Always out swinging their cartoon ball-and-chains in their perfect white bell bottoms. Scandalous! 

Get used to this.

In stages 2 and 7 you have to scoot carefully along and shoot it out with more of Gordon’s goons; depending on the game type selected, this can be done with the Zapper (plugged into the other controller port) or the controller (via a movable crosshair). The latter technique is much slower and will probably get you killed. You always magically have bullets in these stages, regardless of how empty your bullet counter is in the street-fighting portion of the game.

Gray is the preferred color for swamp ops. Gray sweat pants. Any true operator knows that.

Stages 4 and 5 are kind of like a racing game, except blue jeeps and prop planes are constantly trying to murder you. In the original Famicom version, your jeep had a life bar, but in the US version, one mistake kills you. I guess they figured that since us Americans are obsessed with cars, we’d appreciate the hardcore hell-on-wheels version.

Yes. Apparently you are going 180 mph on a dirt road. No big deal.

Bayou Billy is a pretty respectably hard game, right from the beginning. It’s so hard that it has a practice mode. I can play any of the three game types in practice mode and get my ass annihilated halfway through. The actual game is damn near impossible for me; I admit that I had to watch a longplay just to get a look at all of it. The bosses in the main game seem uncompromisingly brutal in that way beat-em-up bosses often are, with huge hit ranges and more durability than a Panzer tank. Once you make it to New Orleans, things get super ridiculous, with circus strongmen and full-on gangster gunmen joining the fray as regular enemies. In fact, the first fight you have in the front yard of the mansion is with three men armed with guns. Inside the mansion things get outright absurd during the final showdown:

The graphics are pretty cool, meeting the standard for Konami games of the era with rich colors and decent texturing. Enemy design isn’t terribly creative, but the swamps and streets of Louisiana look alive and are rendered with authentic detail. The music for Bayou Billy is a hidden diamond; I am especially enamored with the default side scrolling stage music and the boss theme. Konami rarely screws up the music part of anything, and this is no exception. That fighting stage music is probably something you could put on in a club and people would make the best of it! The voice samples (there are only two of them) are all right, but they’re characteristically fuzzy and it’s obvious that they were added as an afterthought.

I’d give Adventures of Bayou Billy 6/10. It’s not a great game, but it’s a weird game. It took a novel approach to diversifying gameplay, it had great music, and it’s one you remember if you encountered it back then. After all, fighting alligators with a stick is pretty hard to forget.

We’ve got some real treats in store for you next month, RetroFans! Stay tuned!

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/01/30/adventures-of-bayou-billy-1988-konami/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2016/01/16/felix-the-cat-hudson-soft-1992/ https://newretrowave.com/2016/01/16/felix-the-cat-hudson-soft-1992/#respond Sat, 16 Jan 2016 02:53:13 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2016/01/17/2016116felix-the-cat-hudson-soft-1992/

Hey RetroFans, remember Felix the Cat?

Or do you just remember the idea of him?

Exactly. He’s a cartoon cat from the silent film era who’s managed to earn himself a mid-tier seat in pop culture. His image is memorable, but most people can’t tell you a second thing about him. He was a hoot in the roaring 20s, enjoyed a revival in the 1950s and a much quieter one in the late 80s… and inexplicably got an NES game in 1992. Here’s the biggest shocker: it’s actually a pretty good game.

In 1954, Joe Oriolo took over the storylines for Felix the Cat’s cartoons (he later bought the intellectual property completely in the 70s). Most of these animated shorts revolve around some antagonist or another trying to get Felix’s magic bag from him. That’s more or less the plot of this game, or at least it’s supposed to be. The Professor (that’s all the name we get for the bushy-faced bastard) has taken Felix’s heavy-lidded gal pal Kitty hostage. If you’ve ever played 2/3rds of all NES-era platformers, you know the drill. Felix has to use that same bag of tricks to rescue his missus from the wicked scientist.

1. The Professor doesn’t really explain much of anything, he just kind of threatens Felix in the vaguest manner possible. 2. Kitty looks completely unconcerned about this whole thing. Maybe it’s because she realizes she’s been kidnapped by a completely inept jackass. 3. Who buys sofa chairs with their own face on them?

Here’s where the surprise kicks in. You start off doing pretty standard platform-action stuff, fighting deceptively cute looking enemies and collecting milk and little images of your face These are just for points. When you get enough of them, a heart flies out of almost nowhere. If you pick it up, you change form a little bit. In the regular land levels, the progression goes like this:

Magic Boxing Glove—>Magic Wand While Felix Laughs Like a Lunatic—>Magic Vehicular Manslaughter via Car Horn—>Magic Inexplicable Tank

Felix The Cat: An Ancient Being Who Takes Many Forms

There are underwater and aerial levels, where you can get submarines and planes, but the gameplay model remains pretty steady. Most of your foes are cartoonish and non-threatening; in fact, one could say that Felix The Cat is a little bit on the easy side, until right around halfway through when you reach the more bizarre levels. I’m gonna come clean and admit that I don’t know what some of the bosses are. I think the first one is some nerdy kid riding a mechanical donkey? Another one I thought was pretty great was a bouncing dog-man with a gun. It got a good shock out of me but was pretty out of place in an Egyptian pyramid. I think there’s a cactus or something too… the point is, you do eventually reach the Professor and save Kitty… who still doesn’t look too worked up over the whole ordeal.

I’m overwhelmed with relief to see you too, Kitty. Lets get you a cup of coffee.

You may be thinking, “this one is far from a classic. Why even talk about it?” To be honest, I like it because it’s such a rarity in terms of NES titles: it’s a licensed game from late in the console’s time span, clearly beating a dead horse by capitalizing on an ephemeral 1920s cartoon character, yet it still manages to be playable and fun. Felix the Cat, as absurd as this may sound, is the kind of NES game we could have used more of as the console saw its way out of the limelight. It’s got decent graphics and music, a really approachable and gradually curving difficulty, and it’s surprisingly well-designed overall. The only nits for me to pick are that the music loops are a bit short and some of the instrumentation is a little, well, harsh. I’ll let you be the judge.

I’d say that Felix the Cat gets 7/10 stars. If you’re an emulator player or a console cart collector, grab this if you don’t have it and give it a try. It’s an often-overlooked entry into the platform genre that really surprises the player with its fun factor.

See you at the end of the month, Retro Gamers!

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2016/01/16/felix-the-cat-hudson-soft-1992/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2015/11/30/kirbys-dream-land-1992-halnintendo/ https://newretrowave.com/2015/11/30/kirbys-dream-land-1992-halnintendo/#respond Mon, 30 Nov 2015 10:39:00 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2015/11/30/20151130kirbys-dream-land-1992-halnintendo/

Greetings, RetroFans! I sincerely hope you had a nice Thanksgiving holiday, whether you pigged out with the family, watched pigskin with your posse, or did something else that suited your fancy. Me? I thought long and hard about the subject of my next article. I thought, “You’ve never written up a Game Boy game. The Game Boy was kind of a big deal. You should crank out a few words on one of those titles.” Well, I think I chose a pretty good one. It’s certainly one of my favorites.

Released in April of 1992 for the Japanese market, Kirby’s Dream Land hit American and European shores that August and was a huge hit. Originally, the game was called “Twinkle Popopo,” and Kirby’s name was Popopo. There was even a debate as to whether he should be pink or yellow, but eventually pink was settled upon. Kirby is now considered one of the Nintendo family’s core members, and he’s a staple in the Smash Bros. series of games that continue to dominate group console sessions today.

Kirby’s Dream Land was designed as a game for both novice and skilled gamers, and was chock full of unlockable features and other rewards that wouldn’t become common in games until the era of the Xbox and the PlayStation. Kirby’s Dream Land was a gentle and easy-to-learn game on the surface, but it featured a “hard mode” players could unlock to challenge themselves as they grew in skill and confidence. Once you beat hard mode, you could even tinker with things like Kirby’s hit points and lives, and listen to sounds and music in a separate menu.

Our story: King Dedede is a jerk.  Less of a true villain and more just a selfish asshole, he’s made off with all the food in Dream Land. Now, most of the regular folks in Dream Land are gentle souls, so they took this lying down. Not Kirby. Kirby likes to get his eat on as much as anyone. Maybe more (definitely more). In fact, it helps him face down King Dedede’s goons on his way to face the big penguin down himself.

King Dedede, more of a bully and a glutton than a proper villain. He even joins forces with Kirby in later games, notably some of the Game Boy Advance titles.

I really do love Kirby. He’s a creature after my own heart. He’s an adorable little pink dude with a cute smile and little flappy arms… and he devours his enemies whole while they’re still alive.

“I’m terrifying if you think about it! Heeheehee!”

Kirby will eat anything to get this done, from jugglers to hippos to ghosts and more. They become big cartoon stars in his belly, which he can then spit out to harm foes in his path. He can also swallow them, which just gets them out of the way so they don’t weigh him down anymore. In later games, Kirby can copy the abilities of certain foes he swallows, but in this first installment of the series, he hasn’t learned how to play with his food that way yet.

The original American box art has Kirby colored white, because of the aforementioned uncertainty about what color he should be. Nintendo of America figured that since the Game Boy was in monochrome, it couldn’t do too much damage to just put him on the box this way. When I first saw this as a kid, I straight up though this was a game about a silly ghost who ate stuff. By then I was used to video game absurdity and wasn’t confused.

The levels are arranged in a way that’s not always linear, but usually makes enough sense that you know where to go. Sometimes you’ll get stuck in a room where you have to accomplish something specific to move on. One example is the rooms where a set of enemies runs out to throw stuff at you and you have to sort them out before you can continue. Each little realm you cross on your way to King Dedede has one of his cronies guarding it as a boss. These thugs range from big goofy trees to spiked storm clouds with eyes. The threats come in a staggering variety, but every boss unwittingly gives you a way to defeat it. Use your head, and more importantly, use your gullet. Eventually you reach Dedede himself, whose innovative and thoughtful way of attacking you involves swinging a hammer around like Thor on a bender. He’s still a handful, so don’t get cocky.

Kirby’s graphics were very good compared to, say, Super Mario Land (the Game Boy entry into Nintendo’s flagship series). Of course, there’s not a ton to be said about monochrome, but this game does a lot with what it has. It has a cartoony and cute visual style, and Kirby himself is very expressive and animated. The composer of the game’s music, Jun Ishikawa, created a fittingly whimsical and light-hearted soundtrack for the game. He has since worked frequently on later games in the series, and set the tone for the franchise music-wise.

The little pink glutton is more than just eye candy, ladies. He’s an icon.

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2015/11/30/kirbys-dream-land-1992-halnintendo/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2015/11/16/wwf-royal-rumble-sculptured-softwareljn-1993/ https://newretrowave.com/2015/11/16/wwf-royal-rumble-sculptured-softwareljn-1993/#respond Mon, 16 Nov 2015 05:43:44 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2015/11/16/20151116wwf-royal-rumble-sculptured-softwareljn-1993/

For tonight’s main event, I present one of my favorite sports games! Well, “sports entertainment” games, anyway.

If you’ve been a longtime reader of our site, then you may know that one of my guilty pleasures is classic pro wrestling, particularly from the mid 70s to the mid 90s. In the 80s and early 90s, the WWF was a parade of colorful, wild characters, and they seemed to live in their own self-contained realm. It was a world of impossible possibilities. The sports entertainment industry was engaged in a cold war during this era, which peaked during the Monday Night Wars (so called because WWF and WCW’s flagship shows both aired on Monday nights and thus competed for ratings). You may not know anything about that, and you may not even care. I respect that. However, if you played video games in the early 90s, you probably at least shook hands with WWF Royal Rumble on your Genesis or SNES.

SNES box art.

Box art for the Genesis version.

Royal Rumble is named after the popular event held every January by what is now known as the WWE. Unlike a typical pro wrestling match (two wrestlers or two tag teams competing to pin one another for a 3 count), the Rumble is an event that can include up to 40 (but usually 20-30) wrestlers. A wrestler is eliminated if he goes over the top rope for any reason. This general idea existed before, but it had every single wrestler in the ring as the match began… and made for one big visual clusterfuck for the fans. Longtime WWF employee Pat Patterson came up with the idea of having two wrestlers start off, then having new grapplers enter the ring at timed intervals. This allowed for a longer-lasting and more exciting product.

Magazine ad for the SNES game. It hit the shelves a couple months before the Genesis version.

This same excitement carries over pretty well into the video game, which was released for both the Genesis/Mega Drive and the SNES. It was developed by Sculptured Software, a company that later assimilated into Acclaim. LJN published the game for both systems. While LJN is well-known among retro gamers as an infamous peddler of turd sandwiches (if you want an example, check out their NES cartridge for Back to the Future), they kept their hands off the nuts & bolts of this one. Royal Rumble is actually the middle game of a sort of trilogy; 1992’s Super Wrestlemania is a more basic version and a prequel, while WWF Raw came along in 1994 with a bit more detail and an updated roster. Ultimately, I prefer Royal Rumble. It captures most of the wrestlers I remember from the television shows, and it’s a good compromise between simplicity and innovative play design.

The game features 12 WWF Superstars, five of which depend on what console you use to rumble. Much like the Soul Calibur series features console-specific characters for today’s gamers, your roster in Royal Rumble was different if you were playing on a Genesis. If you were a Hulk Hogan fan, you wanted that version. If, like me, wanted to style and profile with Ric Flair, you went with the SNES version.  Both versions featured the big WWF names of the time: Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Razor Ramon, Lex Luger (known at that time as The Narcissist), Bam Bam Bigelow, Crush, and the immortal Macho Man Randy Savage. The SNES-specific roster was filled out by Flair, Tatanka, sumo villain Yokozuna, Mr. Perfect, and the Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase. The Genesis swaps those out for IRS (yes, a gimmick villain who works for the Internal Revenue Service), Rick Martel (The Model),  a voodoo-themed guy named Papa Shango, and my personal favorite when I was a kid, Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

The complete roster for both versions. Top row, left to right: Bret Hart, Crush, Hulk Hogan, IRS, Jim Duggan, Lex Luger (Narcissist). Second row: Mr. Perfect, Papa Shango, Randy Savage, Razor Ramon, Ric Flair (WOOOOOO), Rick Martel (The Model). Bottom: Shawn Michaels, Tatanka, Ted DiBiase, Undertaker, Yokozuna.

Players can pick their favorite wrestlers and step into the squared circle with a friend or the CPU. Singles, tag teams, even three-man tag… you can do it all in exhibitions or tournaments, and the “brawl” game type allows you to duke it out with no referee and no holds barred! You can go for the belts that way, or you can select a grappler and go for the ultimate prize… winner of the Royal Rumble itself. The controls take a minute to figure out when you first sit down and plug this game in, but once you’ve got them, you’ve got them. Every wrestler has the same punches and kicks, and can run the ropes and “lock up” with an opponent using other buttons. There’s not a lot of complex combos or anything, which is nice if you like a break from other fighting games. Once you’ve locked up, pick a button and tap it as fast as you can to overpower your foe and hurl him to the mat with any of several moves. Wrestling fans will recognize the suplexes, body slams, and hip tosses they all know and love, and if these are used cleverly, you can even hurl the other guy out of the ring like a sack of potatoes. When you’re out there (or if you manage to conk out the ref for a minute), you can do some underhanded moves like choke your opponent or even thumb his eye. All participants in a match have “life bars” that represent how much damage and abuse they can handle before they’re all out of gas and the fight has left them. In “brawl” matches, the loser is the first one to lose all his meter, while all it does in refereed matches or the Rumble is make you tired and easier to pin or throw out. Finally, every wrestler has his own special move, just like the “real” thing! All of them are activated by pressing the R button (SNES) or the A+B buttons (Genesis, although if you had the 6 button pad you could press X). The moves require your foe to be beaten all the way down, or close to it, and each wrestler has to stand in a specific place or have things set up right to make it happen. For instance, Randy Savage’s famous elbow drop can only be done off the turnbuckle while your foe is prone nearby, and Ric Flair’s signature Figure Four requires you to press the button while standing at a prone opponent’s feet.

Gallery

The graphics for both versions are fairly good, although the SNES version looks slightly more polished. The sound effects are comical, involving a lot of grunts and moans of pain. They don’t vary from character to character. The music is comprised mainly of the wrestlers’ entrance themes; otherwise, there is no music while you sweat and bleed under the lights. There is only the monotone howling of the virtual crowd. I will say that while the SNES’s music will always sound goofy and “fluffy” to me, both versions do a good job of representing the actual pieces of music.

Odds are, you played this game (And maybe even liked it) even if you weren’t a fan of WWF or wrestling. I was a fan, and I loved it. I give Royal Rumble 7 out of 10. It’s a fun, easy-to-learn game with very adjustable difficulty, and it offers a lot of choices and control to the player. It’s not a legend or a must-have title, but I often see it underrated by others who review retro games.

Stay tuned, RetroManiacs! More action at the end of the month. 

]]> https://newretrowave.com/2015/11/16/wwf-royal-rumble-sculptured-softwareljn-1993/feed/ 0 https://newretrowave.com/2015/10/30/castlevania-konami-1986/ https://newretrowave.com/2015/10/30/castlevania-konami-1986/#respond Fri, 30 Oct 2015 18:58:41 +0000 http://new-retro-wave.com/2015/10/30/20151030castlevania-konami-1986/

Once every century, a hoary old castle seems to arise from nowhere. In its shadow come devastation and wickedness. It is the eternal home of the most terrifying fiend ever to wear a cape, the Prince of Darkness himself… Dracula.

It’ll take one pissed-off man with a whip to defeat the Dark Prince. No, I don’t mean Indiana Jones.

Simon Belmont, our hero. (from the Japanese manual)

Castlevania was released as Akumajo Dracula for the Famicom in 1986, coming to the American NES in 1987 and hitting Europe in early ’88. The game is considered by many to be a classic on par with Super Mario Brothers or Legend of Zelda. One of the most memorable and entertaining titles Konami ever released for any platform, the game spawned a lengthy saga spanning from the 8 bit era to the modern age.  There will be a noticeable bias throughout this article, dear reader; you see, there is no denial on my part that the Castlevania series is my absolute favorite. I waited patiently until now, and I’m very happy to be discussing the flagship title in the series now.

                                      I don’t think it matters if you ring the bell, Simon. Go on in.

While the plotline thickens further down the line of this game series, the story of the original is pretty simple. Dracula’s castle as resurfaced, and you, Simon Belmont, must put the King of the Vampires back to rest by finding him in the castle’s tower. What no one told you (but you probably knew anyway) is that Drac’s invited all his buddies over and thrown a sort of perpetual monster party on the castle grounds. Thankfully, you’ve got some firepower in the form of a mystical whip. Called Vampire Killer, this whip has been passed down the Belmont line for the express purpose of gate-crashing Dracula’ s shit and sending him back to oblivion.

                                                A map of the castle (from the Japanese manual).

The Belmont family also has a strange run of luck when it comes to whipping candles; instead of getting wax everywhere, they tend to uncover little hearts and sometimes even powerups. The hearts act as “Ammunition” for a set of sub-weapons that will help you cleave a path through the denizens of the castle. These include a high-arcing axe, a cross-like boomerang that you can use to double-hit an enemy, and holy water that (if placed optimally) can really tear a monster a new one by doing continuous harm. There is another sub-weapon, a stopwatch that will halt all enemies in their tracks for a few seconds… except for the more powerful ones.  In addition to the weapons, you can also find Roman numerals “II” and “III” which allow you to throw more sub-weapons at a time. Combining this with the holy water is actually devastating to certain bosses; you can use multiple holy waters to freeze them in ongoing agony while also spanking them with the whip. This is also a lot of loot lying around – bags of money, even crowns and stuff. Some of it’s in the candles, and some of it’s hidden. If you get badly hurt, try hitting the walls. Dracula left you some meat in there. Not only is this true, but the meat also replenishes a good chunk of lost health. Unfortunately, it is rare and scattered throughout the game in walls.

A brief rundown of the shit Dracula’s left all over his house for you to murder him with. (American manual)

And if ever a set of enemies would have a gamer hitting the walls, it would be the ones living inside Dracula’s nightmarish castle. There are your standard bats and skeletons and even some mermen as you traverse the first set of rooms, and they’re even guarded by a gigantic vampire bat, but it gets even more frustrating later on. There are some types, like the Medusa heads, that just never stop flying at you in a wavy, hard-to-dodge pattern. Little hunchbacks that jump around like total assholes, skeletal dragons that grow out of walls, incredibly durable suits of animated armor that hurl axes… it gets so thick eventually that giant birds are dropping the little hunchbacks on you from above.

Above: The gallery of pain. Click on an image to see a slightly bigger version.

Some of the bosses are a joke, but you still have to watch yourself. Sometimes it’s a matter of skipping sub-weapons you find to keep the right one equipped. For instance, any boss that flies can be nailed good with holy water; wait until it flies near a floor, then cover the floor in holy water while whipping away. This is harder to pull off on the Grim Reaper than it is on Medusa, because the Grim Reaper’s constantly surrounded by flying scythes. The first floor’s giant bat guardian is easier if you use the axe, since it’s usually above you. Some of the other ones, like the twin mummies or Frankenstein’s Monster (paired up with one of those SON OF A BITCH hunchbacks), will give you a pulse-pounding challenge regardless of what you bring to the party. As for Old Drac himself, his first form isn’t too hard. He teleports from one end of the room to another, throwing small fireballs toward you. Once you knock his block off, he mutates into a surprisingly scary-looking demon and leaps at you until you finish him off. You are then treated to a parody credit-roll with puns on the names of famous horror actors.

The graphics in Castlevania aren’t anything groundbreaking, but they’re very good. There’s not much guessing what anything’s supposed to be, and while the color depth isn’t much to write home about, the enemies and background are detailed enough to bring about that creepy horror atmosphere. What really stands out Castlevania (both this game and the whole franchise) is the music. Kinuyo Yamashita and Satoe Terashima composed the score, which is considered by VG music nerds to be an example of how to write a brilliant game soundtrack. “Heart of Fire” is probably my favorite track, but every piece of music in the score is a work of art. This would go on to ring true (to varying degrees) throughout the series.

Two sequels were made for the NES: Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest in 1987, and Castlevania 3: Dracula’s Curse in 1989. They arrived in the USA in ’89 and ’92 respectively. Both games stayed true to the original in terms of gameplay, but contained expanded concepts that made the game nonlinear or added RPG-style elements to gameplay. As most fans know, the series went on to span several generations of console, including the amazing games Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow for Nintendo’s newer handhelds. These feature the near-future protagonist Soma Cruz as he fights to put Dracula’s castle back inside an eclipse.  These games’ play style is modeled directly after the PS1 title Symphony of the Night, another milestone in the Castlevania series where you play Dracula’s son Alucard.

But those we will save for another dark and stormy night (soon)! I give the original Castlevania eight stars out of ten. It’s a classic, it’s got just the right difficulty level to be truly engaging, and there’s nothing like beating Dracula’s head off with a whip.

Here’s a f*cking insane speed run.

Here’s a great article on the chronological storyline of the whole series.

Here is a great place to learn all kinds of stuff about the games, the series, and anything related to the franchise.

Happy Halloween, RetroMonsters!

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